The Queen of Hearts
by F.G.Holmes
Summary: Sequel to the miniseries event: The Queen seeks revenge on all of Wonderland by obtaining immortal powers, while Alice and Hatter hurry to stop the Queen from taking over.


Fiona's Glen

A strange, cold breeze wrapped around a special grove of tall quaking aspen trunks, whose glittering emerald leaves shivered in the sudden chill. Bunches of pink and purple sweet peas, yellow daffodils and blue hydrangeas flourishing among the forest fodder stiffened, some of them recoiling in their petals. A light gray, seemingly harmless cloud slinked across the incandescent blue sky, its long, thin tendrils moving towards the horizon like a wraith. The cloud's shadow cast an eerie gloom on the dewy spring morning and all in the gentle country commonly referred to as Fiona's Glen grew quiet and still. A tall chipmunk nibbling on a seed started. He dart his head from side to side, then stopped. Deer grazing near a spring shot up their heads. A small, tawny rabbit perked up its floppy ears. Then all scattered.

Just as the creatures of Fiona's Glen burrowed deep under the earth or ran for cover in their dens, the rather large and ornately decorated shoe of an equally robust and heavily draped woman stomped down into the thick, muzzy moss. She continued to step westward, leaving behind a trail of rather large heel indents in the patches of muzzy moss intermingled with lush green grass. The lurking cloud moved with her, trailing behind it a white-washed gray sky, which slowly and somehow painfully ebbed away at the fresh morning sun.

The woman stepped on anything in her path, crushing the stiffened flowers under her power. Her once glorious rose-red train, now muddied and torn, clawed over the flattened flora without mercy. It seemed every step was deliberate, each stomp a gesture of the frustration she kept bottled in what remained of her awful, cold heart. The skirt of her royal gown was tattered shamefully, the elegant details some poor tailor had once crafted lovingly into the rich fabric frayed and hung loosely in bits and pieces. The bodice stretched out to breaking point but held, as if someone was walking behind her holding it together with one firm grasp. Her neck was bare, save for the age spots, wrinkles, and tiny purple veins dividing her bosom like a fleshy map. But her lips, though lined with age, were still as plump and as rosy as the day she married. And her eyes were as menacing as the day she left her husband, the King, to die.

She was the Queen of Hearts.

Deep in the glen, the Queen made her way towards its heart: a grassy, unassuming hill, which was more like a mound in size, leaning lazily to one side, resting as if asleep in the center of a roundish clearing. The morning sun was just rising over its peak and shone through the aspens, bouncing off their green and gold leaves, making the shivering leaves look like glimmering diamonds. Faint wisps sparkled everywhere and a soothing, faraway voice hummed a soft lullaby. The Queen snarled and lowered her head, scraping her feet against the turf, kicking up soil behind her like an infuriated bull about to charge.

Just as she neared the ancient mound, she heard the voice of the lullaby suddenly and loudly shriek and die out, while the faint, sparkling wisps disappeared with the passing of the cloud over head. A soft thunder rumbled under her feet. The Queen smiled a wicked smile. "I hear you, old one," her hideous voice croaked. The rumbling thunder grew stronger, the vibrations shuddering her whole body. "You have something I want," she said, her wicked smile twisting into an even more frightening snarl. "Give it to me now," she said in a throaty growl. "Or you'll be destroyed."

The rumbling thunder ceased. For a moment, there was absolute quiet, as though the ancient mound had complied. The Queen's eyes narrowed. She was no fool. "You dare cross the Queen of Hearts, lowly Guardian of the Glen?"

A different kind of rumbling occurred this time, and the ancient mound shifted, now no longer appearing to lazily slump to one side. Three massive, bulbous green eyes protruded near the top of the mound and a wide slit seemed to suddenly have appeared beneath the eyes. Two thin arms disguised as tree branches pulled and snapped apart from the body. The Guardian of the Glen flexed its fingers as it sat upright in the clearing. After a few cleansing breaths, it spoke in one of the many dialects of the Ancient Tongue: "You are no Queen."

The Queen's face blazed with white-hot anger. "Give me what I came for," her voice crawled slowly, and then, "NOW!" her roaring growl making the nearby trees shiver.

The Guardian lazily blinked one, two, then all three of its eyes. "Your power is false. You cannot harm me. I am protected. Now go away. You frighten my children."

Instead of screaming, the Queen's infamous temper cooled and she smiled plainly. While the Guardian had talked, the cloud above them was busy spiraling down to the earth, its tendrils twirling in a cyclone, layering upon itself until a sizeable twister formed just over the mound's head. "You are correct, old one. My power has weakened. But you forget that I still have influence over the Northern regions. And their power is considerably greater than yours will ever be." As she spoke, the twister splintered off into many smaller cyclones, and those cyclones poked at the Guardian's body. The Guardian's eyes widened. "What is this?" it asked, suddenly fearful. The cyclones burrowed deep into the Guardian's massive head. It groaned.

"This is revenge," she said. "And now you will die for my cause."

"Nooo!" it cried out in agony, the limbs on the trees surrounding the clearing shrinking into brittle stems. "You cannot do this! I must protect the…" but his thoughts disintegrated into garbles and sputters. The cyclones had engulfed him with their poisonous tendrils. The Queen rolled her eyes. "Be done with it already!" she snapped. All at once, the cyclones bounded together and the sound of a balloon being squeezed followed by a loud pop indicated that the cyclones had done their job: the Guardian of the Glen was no more.

"Imbecile," she spat, her face in disgust as she looked down at the slumping heap of the Guardian's carcass. With a single, fierce look from the Queen, the cyclones quickly dug around the mess until they retrieved the orb. They lifted it up to the Queen's eye level and waited. She gazed into the milky blue orb fondly, as if greeting a long lost pet. "I have you," she said. "At long last, I have you." Taking the orb into her hand and placing it in a black velvet bag, the Queen took one last dismissive look around the grounds and feeling completely satisfied with the destruction she caused, she looked upwards to the sky that was no longer a sky one would remember but a thick, hazy fog perpetually falling towards the earth, and with a slight nod, vanished.

ii.

Alice Hamilton looked down to the city street from the window of her martial arts studio. She sipped water from a bottle slowly, almost closing her eyes in a gentle trance. The sweat dribbled down her neck in long, single streaks. A door closed behind her. She blinked and continued looking down the street. Today's session had gone well. Her class was full of young, eager faces anxious to learn, yet they were all so focused on the objective: balancing teamwork and self-reliance through strategy. The lesson forced her students to think of their actions before they took them, to go in to their matches with a plan. This idea had occurred to her while she was watching two seasoned chess players sparring at a bench in Winchester Park. They calculated each potential move and its consequences moves in advance. By the time one had moved his knight, the other had his bishop moving to take the Queen.

It was a fun exercise, though, in the studio. The class was quieter than normal, as all of her students were deep in thought. Then, as they started the matches, the students seemed to move faster and with higher accuracy. Outwardly, she was impressed with the class, but secretly she was awed by how a simple idea could translate so well and help to improve her students' skills.

Alice walked away from the window to pick up a towel. She patted down the base of her neck, which was sticky with sweat. This feels nice, she thought. It feels _right_.

She had opened her studio a year ago to younger students, although at first she was nervous about teaching discipline and skill to over-privileged and attention deficit kids. But, she thought with a smile, she was wrong. Most kids in her class were not over-privileged or hyper active, although there had been one or two clowns attending every so often. The kids wanted to learn. In fact, as most of their parents (or guardians) admitted, they needed this. Her studio was a safe haven for many of the inner-city kids, who didn't have the resources to fend for themselves. Ever since opening her studio to kids, the stories she heard never ceased: stories about how her lesson on using the quickest, most effective strikes to end a fight saved a boy from being pummeled by a gang of bullies, how her philosophy on self-reliance improved some girl's grades, or how her classes brought together kids from different neighborhoods together and created lasting bonds.

She was getting noticed, too. A local newspaper recently ran an editorial on her studio's impacts on the city's youth, which brought her considerable attention and increased her studio's registrations by seventy-two percent in the last quarter. And that itself was note-worthy: a year ago, she rarely thought about her studio as a business, nor how to improve its earnings through the year. A year ago, she was just an instructor, nothing more.

She looked down across the street to the café on the corner, suddenly remembering something. Time for tea….

iii.

Back at her apartment, Alice and her mother Carol were setting the table when the door buzzed. Both women looked up. Alice casually walked over, taking a moment to breathe deep before opening the door. They stared at each other. She wore a wry smile and he wore a collared shirt. "Hi," she said softly, the toe of one pump tapping on the floor.

"Hi," he said. He looked her over once and putting a hand on her waist stepped forward and gave her a long, light kiss on the lips. Alice let her hand fall on his shoulder.

A clank of dinnerware startled them. Alice whipped her head around. Carol gave her a "whoopsie" look and shrugged. "Hello Ms. Hamilton. How are yeh?" he said, giving her a nod and a happy grin.

"Oh, just fine, David," said Carol. "Come on in," she said, waving her hand. "Dinner's about ready." She turned towards the kitchen.

Alice shut the door behind her and watched David Hatter stroll into the dining area. She looked him over. She liked what he was wearing, just some loose-fitting denims, a brown jacket, and a dark collared shirt. He smelled nice, too, she thought, breathing in his scent deeply.

As if on cue, he half-turned, giving her narrowed eyes, but before he could say anything Carol returned from the kitchen, carrying a hot bowl of mashed potatoes. "Can I help with anything?" he asked, to which Carol shook her head in protest. "Please. Have a seat," she said. Carol waved her hand to one of the dining chairs. "Oh! Can I get you anything to drink? Water? Wine?" Hatter shrugged politely. "I'll have what you're havin'," he said. She put on her best, motherly smile and disappeared into the kitchen. Hatter pulled the chair next to him out from under the table and waited for Alice to sit. He looked her over carefully. The clinking of glasses in the other room stabbed the silence with sharp, punctuated clangs. Alice cleared her throat. "So," she said, turning her light blue eyes on Hatter as he sat down in the chair next to hers. "Tell me."

Hatter smiled, though his eyes remained wary. "Tell you…what?"

"About life on the road," she said with a hefty sigh. "Where you went…what you saw…who you met…" she added quietly.

Carol walked in with two glasses of white wine just as Hatter opened his mouth. "I was wondering about that, too," she said, setting a glass down in front of Hatter. "But for now, let's eat. I don't want anyone to lose their appetites just yet," she said. Then, she tucked in.

iv.

Dinner went by quietly and without much conversation. Alice pecked at her roast chicken with a fork. Suddenly, she stirred from her trance, looking up to find Hatter busily eating away. When she glanced at her mother, she was surprised to find her giving her a warm smile – a genuine smile. Lately, any mention of Hatter brought a coldness to her mother's casual warmth, and for months Alice ignored it, hoping her mother would give up on being angry at the strange, untrustworthy man who replaced the great and honest Jack Chase. Well, angry wasn't the right word for it. There was some sort of…disappointment that her mother just wouldn't admit to, even when Alice pestered her. Even now, despite her relaxed composure, Carol was biting back words, words that if spoken might cut too deep. Alice brought her eyes back to Hatter: who was he? In that fantasy world that was somehow real, he was a smuggler, a drug peddler, a con man, a resistance fighter, hell, maybe even a thief! Yet in this world, he was just Hatter. No one knew him here. Except for Alice, no one knew that Wonderland did in fact exist – and that he was a creature of that world. She smirked. It was strange thinking of him as an alien. Looking at him at the dinner table, anyone would think he was some working class hero with a funny accent.

What does he know? She thought.

"Well, then," said Carol, shaking Alice from her thoughts. "I'll clean up." Her chair scratched against the wood. "I'll help," said Alice, collecting plates and silverware.

Once in the kitchen, Alice stared at her mother. "Why do you hate him?" she asked. For a moment, she was taken by how direct her question had been, not expecting it to come from her mouth so strongly. Her mother evidently thought this, too, for her grip on a plate slipped and crashed into the sink. She attempted to do the dishes with trembling hands. "I don't hate David," said Carol in a condescending tone. "What would ever give you such an idea?"

"Because until now, you haven't even recognized the fact that he was gone for three months. Every time I brought him up, you'd change the subject."

"That's not true," said Carol. She was shaking her head. Soap driplits splashed her cheek. "I just figured you were okay with it and didn't want to pry into your business."

"Okay? Okay? Mom, he was gone for three months. I didn't see him for three whole months and you think I was okay with that?"

Her mother stopped pretending to wash the dishes to look at her daughter. "Well you didn't give me a reason to think so. And certainly not David," she muttered.

Alice opened her mouth to protest but heard Hatter approaching. "I'm sorry, but is there something wrong?" Alice and Carol both turned, with one saying "No", while the other said "Yes". Alice gave her mother a sharp glance. "No, there's nothing wrong, Hatter. We're just…"

"Alice," said Carol. "Tell him."

She glared at her mother, at first irritated. But knowing that Hatter was studying her made her buckle. "C'mon," she said, walking out of the kitchen, then out the front door.

When they were finally outside in the warm night air, Alice stopped walking and sat on the stoop. Hatter followed, expelling a big sigh he seemed to have been holding in all evening. "You're mad at me for leaving. You said you wouldn't be," he said.

Alice sniffed. "Yeah, I know." A pause fell between them. "But I was wrong." She finally turned to look at him. She had found it hard to do so earlier because she was so frustrated. Now, though, she could see that he was hurting. "I missed you," she breathed. She set her jaw, batting away an unexpected tear. This wasn't where she wanted to take this.

Hatter relaxed. "I'm sorry it was so long," he said.

"Why couldn't you tell me where you were going?" she interjected.

"It…I couldn't," he said, looking guilty. "Alice," he said, turning on his hip to face her. "It's something I have to do, and you'll just have to trust me that…"

"Enough with this 'trust' thing," she snapped. She closed her eyes and breathed hard. Hatter looked over her helplessly. When she opened her eyes to look at him, she found him pulling away from her. She settled down. "I want to trust you. I want to be with you, Hatter, but you're not making this easy on me. You left without telling me where you would be going or for how long. You hardly ever called me – which by the way is not cool."

"I know, Alice, but…"

"And then you leave me just as I'm starting to take over the studio – by myself – which is especially hurtful because you promised you would help and stupid me I believed you because, and here's the punch line, I trusted you."

"Now that's not fair. You can still trust me," he said sternly. "And I can't apologize enough for not calling you to tell you everything but I couldn't talk about what I was doing. I still can't," he added.

"You're not smuggling, are you?" she asked spontaneously.

"I'm not smuggling. I'm," he started to say before he hesitated. Just then, he seemed to break. "I'm helping a friend, okay?"

"A friend? You were here less than eight months and you have a friend – in God knows where!"

Hatter slowly put a semi-reassuring hand on top of Alice's. "Yes. He's a friend that I'd promise to help if I ever came to this world. But the thing is, I wasn't expecting him to call in the favor so soon."

"Favor?" asked Alice.

"Yeah," Hatter said. He stood up just then and began to pace back and forth, his hands shoved in his pockets. "You see…it's a long story. I met him long before I met you." Hatter turned to look at her. "He's an oyster. Was an oyster. I helped him once when the Queen still ruled Wonderland. But that's all I can say. I promised to keep this quiet, even from you," he added, staring straight into her eyes. "Which hasn't been easy…obviously."

They were quiet for a moment, each person lost in their own thoughts.

Alice's hands trembled. She rubbed them on her leggings.

Taking notice, Hatter crouched down in front of her. He took both hands into his own, stroking both gently with his thumbs. Then he lifted both hands and pressed his lips against them. Alice shut her eyes as an unwanted tear fell down her cheek. They hugged each other for a long while, kissed, and parted for the night.

As she turned for the door, she could almost feel him staring after her with those puppy dog eyes. She hugged herself tight then went inside.

v.

A sharp click echoed off the cavernous walls, which was followed by a cursing frenzy by the Queen, who stopped crawling down the passageway long enough to inspect her nails. "These cursed things!" she snapped. "I'll have talons to replace these toothpicks!" Her rambles and rants continued to flow from her aggravated speech, and it was at some moments as though someone else was there, listening, nodding and saying "Yes, your highness". But she was alone, exiled in fact.

The passageway was nothing but a deep, winding tunnel into the earth. Slimy, sharp boulders narrowed the passage until it was so tight, the Queen had to gulp several large breaths in order to pass through. Her gown snagged and she heard a tearing from behind but she pressed on, realizing that the faster she escaped this hell, the better.

At long last, in the deepest, darkest depths of the passageway, the Queen could feel a warm breeze escaping from the bottom. Her cold heart lightened and she smiled, so very close was she to the mausoleum. The passageway ended and she spilled out into the anteroom. As she pulled herself back to her full height, her spine cracking, she stared up into the dark, heavy ceiling. There was some venomous alien glow illuminating the anteroom's walls. Long Huntsman spiders sprawled out across the stonework. This was an ancient place. The walls were carved out of the black-green stone and had been polished and painted with classical portraits of mythical creatures, most of them harmless minions with horns, hooves, scales, and rodent teeth. Some had long, spiked tails, others had delicate insect-like wings. The Queen observed them all with a smirk, then turned her greedy eyes to the mausoleum opening.

At the left of the mausoleum's opening was a sign carved in stone, which read, "Pronounced as one letter, and written with three, two letters there are, and two only in me. I'm double, I'm single, I'm black, blue, and gray. I'm read from both ends, and the same either way. There are countless possibilities, but only one me. When you use my orb, I show you infinity. What am I?" The Queen read the riddle, gave it one good long thinking over, then scratched her head, and mumbled, "Blast these silly games!" and charged inside.

She stopped just half a foot shy of a murky, opalescent pool. Reaching into the sand-colored pouch, she removed the blue orb stolen from the Guardian of the Glen. She gave it one last half-interested look and chucked it into the unglimmering, unmoving, dead pool. The orb hit the surface with a smack, sending minute ripples down the pool. The liquid, for it did not resemble water, sucked the orb deep down into its center, leaving behind a hole, until all the Queen could hear was a snap and a crack. She winced and stepped back. "Yes," said the Queen, smiling, "Come to me, my Lord and Master."

There was a rumble, but the Queen just stood, waiting for Its awakening.


End file.
